1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure generally relates to techniques for providing flexible and extensible network storage systems. More specifically, this disclosure relates to techniques for using a filesystem device driver to forward filesystem-level information to a network-based storage management system.
2. Related Art
Enterprise data centers typically include large numbers of storage devices that can be accessed using high-speed networks. However, the management overhead for a large number of storage devices can become substantial. For instance, maintaining data consistency, redundancy, and storage system performance in the presence of hard drive failures can involve substantial time, effort, and expertise.
A number of “cloud-based storage” vendors attempt to simplify storage management by providing large-scale remote network storage solutions. Such vendors can leverage economies of scale to provide extensive data storage capacity that can be leased and accessed by clients. Clients can leverage such storage solutions to offload storage management overhead and to quickly and easily increase their data storage capacity on an as-needed basis. However, cloud-based storage involves another set of inherent risks and overheads. For instance, storing data remotely (“in the cloud”) often increases access latency, and multiple clients simultaneously accessing a shared data set in a cloud-based storage system may suffer from data consistency problems. Furthermore, network failures and/or outages in cloud-based storage systems can prevent clients from accessing their data for significant periods of time.
Hence, what is needed are techniques for providing network-based storage capabilities without the above-described problems of existing techniques.